Vice presidential contender Sarah Palin can win the debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden just by showing up. This is not a flippant, pithy, or facetious crack. The bar is so low on her that if she can string together two coherent sentences without stuttering, stammering or sounding like a blathering idiot that will be a triumph. Democrats and much of the media is to blame for this. They have relentlessly fed the cyber and media gab mill with any and every whiff of scandal, gossip, rumor, and exaggeration about Palin. They made her the most vilified GOP candidate since Herbert Hoover. This sorry fact is the amusing part of why Palin will best Biden just by being there.
The real reason she'll one up him tells much about Palin and what vice presidential debates mean. Past VP debates have had about as much relevance to a presidential contest as a noon nap. They've been little more than a lightly regarded curiosity sideshow. The veep candidates could spell out in minute, intelligible detail their stance on foreign policy, the economy, the war on terrorism, health care and education issues and it would still barely stifle a yawn.
When the VP debate was first announced students at Washington University where it will be held openly groused that they weren't getting Obama and McCain.
That instantly changed when McCain plopped Palin on his ticket. Palin at the podium insures that millions will fixate on the debate and TV ratings will almost certainly top the mediocre ratings McCain and Obama 1 got. A demonized Palin standing before the cameras and tossing out pithy homilies and well rehearsed canned GOP policy takes will make her sound to millions like the second coming of well, Hillary.
She has another big advantage over Biden. And that's she's a she. There was much talk that the media was sexist, dismissive, and employed a gender double standard in pounding her. There is a deep tinge of that in its Palin bash. But McCain and top GOP operatives stood that on its head and screamed loudly about it. That alerted millions to the possibility that Palin was treated unfairly solely because she's a woman. Palin padded the gender advantage when she shrewdly told CBS's Katie Couric that she didn't think the media was sexist.
Now that Palin has absolved it of any gender wrong doing it has to be on its best behavior, and maybe even put an occasional good face on her.
A more cautionary approach to Palin means that rival Biden must step even more gingerly around her. If he makes to aggressive an attack on her it will again stir the anger and resentment that Palin is being dogged because she's a woman. Biden will avoid like the plague making any personal digs against her for her real and perceived towering inadequacies on foreign policy and the economy. This will get her off the hook from having to undergo too deep a probe into her woeful inexperience on these issues.
Palin has yet another edge to her gender double edged sword. That's the wildly different ways in which men and women perceive political messages on the war, national security, strong defense, and terrorism from male candidates, as well as on domestic issues.
GOP presidential candidates and presidents in past decades have at various times skewered social programs and nakedly played the race card in presidential campaigns beginning with Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Since then other Republicans at times artfully stoked male rage with racially charged slogans like "law and order," "crime in the streets," "welfare cheats," and "absentee fathers." Bush's John Wayne frontier brashness, and get tough, bring em' on rhetoric in talking about the Iraq and the war against terrorism was calculatingly geared to appeal to supposed male toughness. That appeals to many men. But it also turns off many women. This is no small matter in a tight presidential race. Women make up the majority of voters. They are sensitive to these male verbal cues especially if the target is another female opponent.
In addition, in countless surveys, polls, and anecdotal conversations, women say they are less likely to stay up on political issues than men, and are more likely to vote for a candidate based on personal likes or dislikes than men. Biden must tread carefully here as well.
Palin has a final trump card. She can actually sound halfway credible on the issues. GOP debate experts have certainly been stuffing her head with the right talking points on foreign policy issues. And from what others who've debated her during the Alaska gubernatorial run in 2006 say when it comes down to prepping for one big debate performance she can make a splash. This won't transform her into a foreign policy wonk nor convince anyone she's the second coming of Biden in legislative experience. She doesn't have to to win. She just needs to show up and not flub her part.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).